TYPOGRAPHICA.

Thanks to a comment by pf on an earlier entry, I have discovered Typographica, a typography blog—or, as they describe it, "a journal of typography featuring news, observations, and open commentary on fonts and typographic design." It's edited by Stephen Coles and Joshua Lurie-Terrell and has been around since May 2002; one of the first entries (by Lurie-Terrell) would have been equally at home here at LH:

There Are 10’s of Thousand’s of Way’s to Apostrophisize

Why does the New York Times use 80’s and 90’s (for example) as shorthand for referring to decades/eras? They aren’t possessives, but rather contractions of 1980s, 1990s, etc. Most journalistic and typographic stylebooks suggest using ’80s and ’90s — makes sense to me. What’s the deal? I wrote the paper to ask but no response.

(Except that I would have italicized New York Times.) The only downside I can see to reading it is that their book reviews are going to tempt me to further overload my poor groaning shelves.

Posted by languagehat at April 17, 2004 09:32 AM